Trump and scandal

Dr. E. Faye Williams |
11/29/2018, 6 a.m.

Dr. E. Faye Williams

For several years, many of us were consumed by the night on which the popular television show “Scandal,” starring Kerry Washington, was broadcast. Well, it seems that the program was our preparation for what’s going on in our country today. Unfortunately, it didn’t prepare us for some of the things that happened.

In Georgia, we’ve just witnessed one of the worst cases of voter suppression to prevent Stacey Abrams and other Democrats from having a fair chance in their election bids. Brian Kemp both ran for governor against Ms. Abrams and made the rules to favor him when he disqualified more than 1 million voters and scandalously decided the rules of the race.

As soon as the key parts of the election were over, No.45 decided to fire U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions after continuously humiliating him when he actually did the right thing in recusing himself from handling the Mueller investigation. It’s clear that firing Mr. Sessions was strictly for the purpose of undermining the work of special counsel Robert Mueller and his team.

Shortly after Mr. Sessions’ firing, we learned that No.45 had made an attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent for president in 2016 — two persons he claimed were his enemies. It’s obvious that No.45 had corrupt intent when he fired Mr. Comey, and he knows that Mrs. Clinton was far more favorable to more people than he was when she received more votes than he did. I guess he didn’t like that, so he has railed against her since he has been in office — second only to his blaming former President Obama for everything.

Once Mr. Sessions was out, No.45 quickly brought in Matthew Whitaker to become acting attorney general. Many brilliant lawyers have agreed that Mr. Whitaker did not meet constitutional requirements to hold such a position because the U.S. Senate had not confirmed him. Add to that all of the biased comments Mr. Whitaker made about the Mueller investigation at various times, proving that he could not be fair in his judgments.

We need to know how and why Mr. Whitaker became the attorney general. One can only assume Mr. Whitaker was brought on to undermine the investigation.

Moving on with scandals, No.45 dismissed the CIA’s report on Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October. No.45 also proclaimed what’s obviously his all-out support of Saudi Arabia over the U.S. intelligence community.

It’s hard to believe, but No.45 actually picked a fight with retired and esteemed Adm. William McRaven, who served as head of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014 and oversaw the 2011 raid by Navy SEALS in Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

No.45 attacked the admiral for not capturing Mr. bin Laden earlier, despite the fact it was not his job. This criticism comes from a president who claims to love the military so much and who claims to have done so much for the military. Now, we learn he is afraid to go to a war zone to visit U.S. soldiers.

There were more scandals from No.45. He jumped into a disgraceful criticism of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, charging that the court was made up of Obama appointees and therefore unfair to him. That criticism led Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court to inform No.45 on Twitter: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal rights to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

That should have been obvious to a sensible president. Unfortunately, we haven’t had one of those lately.

No.45 continues to erase all the goodwill that his predecessor, former President Obama, built around the world. When will our system allow us to end these daily scandals?

The writer is national president of the National Congress of Black Women.